In which I address Crispin Glover as if he was listening, even though I know he's not.

"Give a holler and hate me, HATE ME, go ahead hate me; I love you." Yeah, so... I'm lonely and pissed off, which is rarely a good combination. So I think I'm going to talk about Crispin Glover.

First, some stills of Crispin in the upcoming Simon Says. Oh baby doll. (Yes, I did get that phrase off of Huntress on Justice League Unlimited. Shush.) *purrpurrpurr* Thanks for doing another horror movie, Crispin! Even if there aren't any rats in this one...

Moving on, saltedpin alerted me to this interview, which is extremely thorough and interesting. But there were a couple bits I wanted to highlight:

"Sometimes I meet some of the hardcore [fans]. There was one girl at the signing who has done a website about me that I had seen. I’m very appreciative of that and that kind of thing is very good for business. I’m glad to meet those people and I’m very encouraging of them to continue. I have no qualms about people saying good things about me. I don’t think of myself as a sex symbol and I don’t think I get called that. But I certainly know that there are women that are interested and that’s good."

... please, dear god, don't let that be me. Since it'd mean he also mistook me for a girl. Um. Anyway, I mean, c'mon, ratpr0n is really about, um, Willard, and in no way, shape, or form is it intended as an excuse to drool over Crispin. Uh. I don't know whether that's sarcasm or not. Still, it's sorta giving me the heebie-jeebies, even if it isn't necessarily referring to my site. At least I wish I had more smart-sounding content on there. Anyone want to write an essay about Willard for me? You know you do.

Also, psst... Crispin! It's not just women who are interested.

"Racism means to classify by race which is a very different than hating someone for their race. On some level just to classify by race, such as homo sapien is racist."

*blinks* I think you fucked up a little Crispin... that sounds more like specism (species-ism?). And... yeah. Go reread about the difference between race and species as they apply to human beings and try that again.

"I feel that any music that has stanzas or refrains is procultural because it comes from a proletariat working class history that started at least from the serfs in the Middle Ages when they would sing in that fashion. It represents a middle class point of view and it makes people feel emotionally feel good about being a working class person. I feel that rock music is all procultural and people tend to get really mad about it. [*snip*] The ruling class’ music was a nonlingual educated point of view which is now called classical or post-Beethoven romantic era music. That music has gone away because the middle class overthrew the ruling class. When this culture is listening to rock music it is listening to the anthem that is proculturalism. Even though there are these subcategories of stanza and refrain music like rap, alternative or whatever words they use to categorize, they really are all ultimately harkening back to the working class anthems."

I love you and your work dearly, Crispin, but this is an issue where your opinion makes me roll my eyes. Repeat after me: bourgeois is not necessarily a bad thing. Deep breaths.

Crispin, I know you've brought up the counter-culture of the '60s before as an example. And looking back at that era it's obvious that lyrical music played a significant role in defining and expressing the beliefs and emotions of not only the hippie counter-culture but the art culture of the sixties and seventies of which Andy Warhol (and The Velvet Underground) was a part. Now they are mainstream, of course, and Bob Dylan has appeared in an ad for Victoria's Secret. Does that mean mainstream and pro-cultural are one and the same (or that underground and counter-cultural, for that matter)? I don't think so, necessarily, although it's hard to tell because I think the definitions of both 'pro-' and 'counter-culture' are rather dodgy. It's very subjective, and there's no earthly way to get an objective view of what is or isn't pro- or counter-cultural, particularly when I think it's clear that in our culture certain movements may cross over from the counter-cultural to the pro-cultural as they begin to be marketed toward a large audience (the hippie protest movement, as I noted, and I think rap/hip-hop may fall into this category to some extent as well).

Furthermore, this makes me wonder whether he's considering all lyrical music to fall into this trap... or does it just fall to any kind of music with repetition in the form of stanzas or refrains? Is opera excused? How about light opera? What about music and forms developed before the Middle Ages and in the period leading up to the Baroque era? (Any music theory students want to help me out and enlighten me here?) What about religious music? Wouldn't any music with an overt (or covert, I guess) religious message or connotation be inherently pro-cultural? Besides, classical music has not 'gone away' as he puts it; it is still played and respected, and there are still a small number of people working in the field who are having some success composing '"nonlingual, educated" music. (Granted, a number of them also work composing for film, but that isn't the point.) I'm not saying that most of what is out there today for public consumption isn't rather bland and tasteless, geared toward the lowest common denominator. But that's really most everything: film, artwork, writing, you name it. We're talking Sturgeon's Law, here.

In other words: I think it's a little pretentious and silly to say that the only music that can be against the grain of the culture is that which is not derived from the working-class model he referenced. Dude, Crispin, I kinda think you read this somewhere and now you're repeating it (which isn't a bad thing; I do it far more often than I'm willing to admit). Of course, if it is a conclusion you support of your own accord... well, bully for you. Gah, FUCK, I want to debate this.

Adding you... I remember you from media miner a few years back... you drew a lot of good Harry/Remus stuff. Anyway, you seem like an interesting person and we also have similar political views. So yeah... :P

Hi, I hope you don't mind, but I've friended you. I've been looking for people to talk about Agent Pendergast and those books, and when I came across your LJ and saw the mention of Crispin Glover! Wow!

Well, you know, "human race" and all that. I get what he means, even if it does seem a little wonkily stated. He tends to do that, at times. Hell, all the time.

I think that, over time, things that were once considered "counter" cultural tend to get popular, and therefore become (sadly) mainstream. I mean, yes. That does happen. I see it all the time, with bands, movies, books, just about any form of media. Even in highschool. All it takes are the right people to think something's cool, and all of a sudden it's all you're seeing, and you're sad because you liked it before it was cool, and now you just seem like you're following the crowd, when really...

And yeah, he does get kind of...well...I'm not sure how to put this. I guess I'll just quote you in saying pretentious, because I don't like to call him that XD. But yes, it was a pretentious thing to say, anyway. It all comes down to the fact that nothing is orignal, really. There really is no getting around that. Obviously, such as things found in counterculturalism, there are rarer forms of expression, but they still aren't really original in the truest sense of the word.

But racism requires that there be multiple, fundamentally equal "races" with one subordinating another. When we refer to the "human race," it is absolutely a singular entity. There is no other "race" that is equal to humanity, hence the idea of referring to the term "human race" as racist makes absolutely no sense. Racism does not mean to merely "classify by race" any more than sexism merely means classifying by gender. Racism and sexism both stem from the false beliefs that certain groups of people are better or worse than others based upon relatively minor genetic variation.

So, basically, Crispin was being ignorant.

Even in highschool.

LOL, well, the attitude you're referring to is especially high school, yeah. The issue that concerned me was not so much the fact that sometimes the counterculture surges into a larger consciousness and becomes marketable to a larger audience (because, actually, even Crispin will tell you that's not a bad thing at all in a capitalist society). What bothered me was that Crispin was being a snob and a hypocrite. He references the hippie counterculture as being the last big, marketable counterculture revolution, but then ignores the influence lyrical music had on that era and that movement. And on art movements well into the '70s.

I don't care so much about something only being good so long as it remains "underground." I don't think "mainstream" is a dirty word at all. And I'm not even certain that mainstream = procultural as opposed to countercultural.

But yes, it was a pretentious thing to say, anyway.

Actually, I reread it now and I find it to be something a little uglier: I think it's classism. Not surprising, considering he's a middle-aged white male living and working in Hollywood. He's never been middle or working class, so it's not surprising that he would look down on material that is marketed to the middle and working classes as "procultural" or less artistically worthy. But it's a bullshit, biased, and (based on what I've heard him say before) hypocritical attitude, in my opinion. Also, it says to me that he's not been listening to the better stuff that's been made in the last, oh, decade or so. I'd think that some of the work put out recently, especially by artists like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Tori Amos, dovetails quite nicely with some of his own themes and interests.

And yeah, I'm not such an elitist as to say "oh, this music is too popular, I can't like it". That's just retarded. I was just making an example, which turned out to be rather irrelevant XD.

I mostly agree with you. He's said that he keeps himself kind of oblivious to some mainstream media, such as television, but I'm not sure how far that avoidance extends. Maybe he just doesn't realize exactly how much there still is, which makes it cool that you made him that CD ^_^. I'd like to make him one as well, just of music that I think me might like.